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User customization is one of the hottest trends in the contemporary marketplace. Though most of us may associate this phenomenon with Dell computers or Mini Coopers, this trend connects to a much broader shift in the consumption patterns of ordinary Americans.

As consumers become more and more accustomed to controlling "for the better" the finer details of their everyday lives, their relationships, their happiness etc., the broader culture is goading us to inject custom modifications into more and more of our product and service experiences. What we mean by "customization" here is something very different from "selecting" a product that best suits us within a pre-set portfolio. The trend toward customization is about either 1) co-designing with innovative companies before we buy (e.g., Dell computers) or 2) buying products whose very use promises built-in potential for customization.

It is the latter arena of consumer customization that intrigues us here.


The Example of Software for Sharing Personal Media Content

As consumers of media, we have come a long way from the Kodak slide show as a means to tell visual and other stories about our ongoing lives. Product/services that ground themselves in the creative re-assembling of consumers' privately owned content now promise us the most dynamic kind of media-sharing experiences by injecting constant flux, dynamism and creative potential right into the heart of what used to be a somewhat sleep-inducing user experience. Remember how many of us tended to fall asleep to the whir of the Kodak slide projector fan during someone's vacation slide show? These media sharing products are less products, in the commodity sense, than studio assistants that give us the tools to tell powerful stories within our social networks in ways most of our parents marvel at.

The most powerful tools in this regard, unfortunately, are unwieldy professional software packages like Adobe's Photoshop or Premier. They are designed for professionals, though often used by amateurs enticed by the awesome creative potential associated with them.

Consumer-oriented media-sharing tools have emerged recently to fill a need gap for more user-friendly ways of re-assembling multi-media content and disseminating it to friends. But we are struck at how simple mistakes often get made in "dumbing down" the editing controls from the professional level. The most critical blunder here is to tempt consumers with customizations at their desktop, which, they ultimately can't share due to legal copyright restrictions.


Getting Customization Wrong: The Customization Tease

Photoshow is a recent example of a multi-media photo sharing software that is extremely intuitive and quick to learn. It entices consumers to create soundtracks to their custom animated slide shows by offering an order of user experience that few people ever bothered to pull off when they whipped out their Kodak Carousel from the closet and dusted off an old reel of slides.

Yet, it ends up creating a nightmarish brand scenario hours after users have begun to fine tune their first show. When ambitious users first start out, they immediately notice that the soundtrack editing feature allows them to insert "custom MP3s." Right on! Soon, they are navigating their iTunes library for cool music to splice in and add emotional depth to their show and prevent the "Kodak snore" we all remember so well.

Since the whole point of software like Photoshow is to create custom content from what we privately own and then share it within our social networks, the user quickly tests their Photoshow and then hits "upload," eager to send out a bulk e-mail and invite everyone to see her creation.Then...they get an error message "Custom MP3s cannot be uploaded." Instantly, users understand that they have been caught in an enormous software tease, with no advance warning and with no apology after the fact.

Suddenly, the power of web-based custom content sharing is defeated and its power drained. Users are left with no other option but to re-do their soundtracks with "licensed" Photoshow songs, whose musical tastes resemble what you might see at a Dollar Store.


Anticipate User Frustrations Before You Launch

At Tinderbox, we know that there are limits to functionality placed on software innovators by those in the legal wing of their respective companies. What continues to surprise us is the inability to recognize that offering audio mixing without free reign on choice is essentially like not offering it at all. Certain kinds of creative experience, like mixing one's own media together, can not feel right when limits on content are imposed.

Those designing these kinds of creative, online media experiences need to honor what creativity is and, instead of offering virtually no choice, should either 1) find creative business alliances that allow them to enable maximal choice (even for a tiny fee) or 2) find more creative attorneys who can defend "non-commercial" use clauses more robustly in the context of a modern, Internet age.

Tinderbox is a part of The Hartman Group, Inc. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.